The Birth of For-Profit Censorship
Are Twitter and Facebook Revealing a New Marketing Plan for a Post Section 230 World?
Since the 90s, big tech businesses have been loudly and legally fighting to avoid being defined as news media. While it may have been useful in a previous age, now they want to pretend that they are still a neutral carrier, hiding behind supposedly neutral “algorithms” that allows them to reap the benefits of being our primary conduit of discourse without any of the responsibilities to defamation or truth.
But that position has been getting harder and harder to maintain. By intentionally choking off a New York Post story from their users, both Facebook and Twitter revealed just how easily they can cut off their users from access to the Press.
At first glance, this may seem like the social media platforms are finally looking to mitigate the flood of disinformation that has rocked the foundations of our society over the last decade. But this isn’t about truth. In the days since the article was published, we’ve already seen that our media is already capable of arguing the merits of the story.
What has become clearer is what’s at stake if we continue to allow these private companies to act as the primary platform for information and discourse without any regulation or oversight. And by blocking the Post’s article on the basis of a “hack” can easily be seen as a message to those in power that they are willing and able to provide censorship as a service in return for allowing continued unregulated monopoly control.
Monetizing access for a political agenda aligns with their core goals: maximizing their profits from selling access to users and extracting as much value from our social discourse as possible.
Twitter initially claimed that their reason for blocking the article was that it exposed “hacked” information. It’s yet another in a long line of “rules” that seem to only apply to a single tweet. From the Pentagon Papers to Snowden, to Trump’s taxes, we rely on anonymous sources and leaks to keep our leaders accountable. For journalists, the job is to deliver the truth they’ve got, no matter what the source.
Twitter’s willingness to quickly back off under pressure only shows just how easily manipulated they are when their bottom line is at stake. Meanwhile, Facebook once again says nothing and lets their actions speak louder than words.
Sorry or not, the moment that the social media monopolies decided to put their thumb on the scales the nature of the services they are offering us has fundamentally changed.
From this moment forward they can only pretend to be a medium for pure communication. By censoring the feed, the social media giants are providing a de facto admission that they are the curators of the news, and that they value opinion over truth.
When pressed they’ll continue to claim that these “learning experiences” allow them to build better algorithmic solutions. That somehow they can create rules on the fly which says which content is automatically labeled as acceptable or unacceptable. But what they will ultimately generate is a system for obfuscating their own bias while claiming they still deserve their protections.
But blocking news from a major source is a way to announce that they are now open to having their influence bought and sold. The users, as always, are being bundled and packaged as a resource that is available to the highest bidder. We are all now hostages in an information war that most of us don't realize is being fought.
A good start would be lifting the exemptions that tech companies have enjoyed for decades and instead regulate these businesses like we do the rest of the media. That could open the door to much needed anti-trust legislation that already seems to be swirling around Washington.
No matter the controversy behind it, by blocking users from accessing a story from a major newspaper the social media giants have revealed that at their core these platforms are designed for consent and control.